Forum:Reducing the scope of the wiki
As far as I can remember, we've always had at least an eye on making the wiki an "everything official SC" wiki. However, the ways things have turned out, we've practically only managed to get a solid footing on lore. Thing like strategy and the editor we've had little or no success in, as none of our active editors seem to be overly familiar in those aspects. On the whole, I do not see this as a loss, because other sites and wikis seem to have picked up, or at least are in the process of trying to pick up, the slack. For example, Liquipedia is now well established on the SCI strategy front, and is well placed to carry on into SCII. I think that rather than attempting to replicate the work here with our limited personpower and expertise, we should "delegate" the aspects we aren't handling to those other sites. In the case of strategy, we might simply have links saying "for this unit's strategy go to this Liquipedia page" or something to that effect. (I imagine our entire "-subject- portal" would effectively become an index of pertinent "other wiki" pages.) If we go this route, it'd probably be polite for us to inform the other sites that we'd be leeching off of. It might also be a good way to help fill up our community portal page. - Meco (talk, ) 20:20, July 25, 2010 (UTC) I think we should just try harder to cover those things such as strategy and the SCI and SCII editors better, not link to competing wikis. For one thing, reducing the number of articles would decrease the search ranking of this wiki's articles on Google and other search engines, and there would be less page hits, visitors, and editors. Secondly, I don't think Liquipedia, for instance, would want to limit its scope to not cover things covered here, as the coverage on both wikis overlaps a great deal. Thirdly, it would be a chore to delete all articles on those subjects and instead put up links to other wikis or sites, and to come up with a policy on what types of official StarCraft content not to include. Finally, although this is the least of my concerns, Wikia would not like it if this page's search engine ranking went down and number of page hits decreased. I do think competing against other wikis such as Liquipedia is good because then one wiki might have better coverage than another for a certain topic but it gives people a choice and inspires people on both wikis to try harder in the friendly competition (and of course the same people might even be contributing to multiple wikis, which is great). Competition does breed innovation, and a bit of healthy competition with other wikis covering StarCraft on subjects this wiki doesn't cover quite as well is sure to increase the quality of both wikis. We could still link to our friendly competition on the Community Portal, if they link back (and get other good sites like sclegacy.com up on there too if we can get links back). But even if we restrict our coverage not to cover things they cover better, they will still cover the same things as us in many cases (e.g. each of the units and buildings in SC1 and SC2) making competition unavoidable. Fan-Created Content However, we do have some articles on fan-created content here on this wiki. I do think they could all be all moved to the wiki specially devoted to fan-created StarCraft content. I think the difference is, this wiki is about official StarCraft content, which there is plenty of, not fan-created content. How about we start off with moving the fan-created content articles to the wiki about that stuff and deleting them from here once all the content is there, which is probably something we can all agree on? And we can change all links to those articles here to point to the articles on the StarCraft fan fiction wiki using the w:c interwiki links. --The Overmind 22:25, July 25, 2010 (UTC) :The only way "try harder" works is if we are able to attract "experts" in the fields we are lacking in. I am not optimistic of that happening, especially after the experience of the past few years. Which is why I am suggesting letting established wikis handle it. "Healthy competition" only occurs when the runners are both proficient. This is hardly the case in the areas of strategy and map editing. :I do not know how familiar you are with Liquipedia, but there seems to be very little overlap. There concentration is in strategy, just as ours seems to be lore. We both display stats, but then everybody displays stats; it's hardly a critical point. If they were starting into lore, it'd be the same situation as us trying to get back into strategy: a massive "startup cost", not helped by the fact the area is already handled very well elsewhere. :As for fan created content, our scope only includes notable fan created content/fan persons/etc.. This is well within our means of handling, since those articles are not meant to include every last detail on the subject. For example, if DotA comes to SCII, our article would be a general overview of the map, not a huge in-depth strategy guide of how to play it. - Meco (talk, ) 23:26, July 25, 2010 (UTC) :I totally agree with the Overmind (his mind is over ours. Get it ? Eh, sorry for the joke) . But I think it is a very good idea to move the fan-created content to a fan-fiction wikia. This would unite us with such a wikia. If we post a link to it on an article about "Fan-Created Content", I think it would be perfect. Andra2404 10:25, August 30, 2010 (UTC) There's also a timing issue. Our strategy articles are poor since we're a small group. But with the launch of StarCraft II we're going to grow, and the talent pool will widen. Obviously the wiki isn't at the top of the search charts, but if somebody searches specifically for "StarCraft wiki" or "StarCraft II Wiki" (or something similar) we do appear at the top of the charts. So it's a bit early to be making decisions yet. I wonder what to do with those maps. I know Wowwiki has an article devoted to DotA which is fan-made, but maybe it's not a good idea to copy them. The fanfiction wiki seems devoted less to fanfiction and more to fan ideas about gameplay, so moving the fan map content there seems like a good idea. PSH aka Kimera 757 (talk) ) 23:17, July 25, 2010 (UTC) :I would hope the editor pool grows. But we should consider, at least as a contingency, what to do if things don't pan out. I'm particularly concerned with SCI strategy. With SCII, there is a possibility we can do well since everyone else is starting almost from scratch in that area. For SCI, things are very different. - Meco (talk, ) 23:26, July 25, 2010 (UTC) Well, from a previous experience, I know very well that you shouldn't contradict Mr. Meco if you have superficial reasons (as I did for blogs). Still, we must think if we want starcraft wikia to be a central domain to all the other sites, or be the "ultimate starcraft source of information". I always had a dream of the latter, for I am sometimes too lazy to look on the internet and make all that research. You just type in what you want, but sometimes, you can't find it, because you don't know what you're truly looking for. Still, I think that this wikia could have a page giving links to all the other starcraft sources of information (like "List of StarCraft Sites", or something like that). THE ULTIMATE QUESTION: WHAT DO WE WANT THIS WIKIA TO BE ? THE CENTRAL DOMAIN FOR ALL THE OTHER SITES OR THE ULTIMATE STARCRAFT SOURCE OF INFORMATION ? Andra2404 10:17, August 30, 2010 (UTC)